Books of the Month

Science, and Philosophy. The Order of Creation ; the Conflict between Genesis and Geology. (The Truth Seeker Co., New York.) A succession of papers, by Gladstone, Huxley, Max Müller, Réville, and Mrs. Linton, in which each smashes the other.—The Human Mystery in Hamlet, an attempt to say an unsaid word, with suggestive parallelisms from the elder poets, by Martin W. Cooke. (Fords.) Mr. Cooke’s contention that in Hamlet Shakespeare was holding the mirror up to the spiritual life of man in this world cannot be called absolutely new, but his little book is interesting from the variety of lights in which he puts this fact, and also for the skill with which he changes the centre of discussion, and relieves us of the everlasting question, Was Hamlet insane or not ? — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Seer, an estimate of his character and genius, by A. Bronson Alcott (Cupples & Hurd), is a reissue of the essay with the addition of Alcott’s Ion, a Monody. — The Soul of the Far East. (Houghton.) In reprinting the papers which appeared under this title in The Atlantic, Mr. Percival Lowell has enlarged the scope by important additions, and the more comprehensive and detailed character of the work gives the book a permanent value. It is really a hand-book to the inner life of Japan and China, and ought, to do much towards introducing Western people to their neighbors’ consciousness.—The Tree of Mythology, its Growth and Fruitage, a study by Charles De B. Mills. (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse.) This essay, the author says, seeks to ascertain something of the origin, the nature, and the growth of myth; what it primarily was, and what has come of it. So it deals with myths arising from metaphor, heroic legends, nursery tales, proverbs, and the like. It is for the most part a mosaic of the work of other students, but Mr. Mills occasionally draws upon his own observation and experience, and the reflections and conclusions are his own. He is a sympathetic student. — The Self : What is It ? by J. S. Malone. (J. P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky.) A philosophical inquiry into the fundamental base of personality, which the writer finds in feeling rather than thinking, and an application to theories of education. The book is racy and readable. Here is an odd sentence from it. The writer is contrasting Jesus Christ with the philosophers: “ On the other hand, the unlearned youth, Jesus, who nevertheless became noted at his first sermon on the mount for speaking with authority, went straight, not to the kitchen, but to the front door, and knocked with authority. The master of the house, Sensibility, opened the door, and embraced the wonderful Stranger at first sight. ‘You are welcome! Abide, and be one of my household henceforth and always!’ In this view of the case it is not at all likely that the remonstrance or wrangling in the back kitchen of rationality can tend in the least to dislodge the Stranger, especially after such a welcome from the master; such wrangling can amount to no more than the clamor of so many fools."—Living Matter, its Cycle of Growth and Decline in Animal Organisms, by C. A. Stephens. (The Laboratory Co., Norway, Maine.) “The present small volume,” says the preface, “is a résumé of an extended investigation into the causes of ‘ old age ’ and organic death. It is furthermore designed as an introduction to a number of hand-books treating of the re-vitalization of the human organism.” The object of the investigation, as presented elsewhere, is to raise the question whether there is any reasonable hope of prolonging life beyond the present time limit, say to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years. Mr. Stephens thinks we can do it; but who wants to be an everlasting grub ? — Persons in search of a new religion may find it by applying to Singleton W. Davis, San Diego, Cal., who has written Sketches of the Scientific Dispensation of a New Religion.

Music and the Stage. The Dramatic Year [1887-88] is the title of an admirable handbook, edited by Edward Fuller, and containing brief criticisms of important theatrical events in the United States, by such competent, critics as H. M. Ticknor, G. E. Montgomery, L. H. Weeks, B. E. Woolf, and others, with a sketch of the season in London by William Archer. It is at once a record of the stage, and, what is more, a really critical survey of the current drama. (Ticknor.) — Mr. George P. Upton has added to his excellent hand-books another on The Standard Symphonies, their history, their music, and their composers. (McClurg.) The authors commented on range from Beethoven to Dvorák, and the treatment is very free from vague, sentimental talk. The young student in music will find the book a most serviceable aid to an intelligent comprehension of the subjects. — Musical Instruments and their Homes, by Mary E. Brown and William Adams Brown, with two hundred and seventy illustrations in pen and ink by William Adams Brown; the whole forming a complete catalogue of the collection of musical instruments now in the possession of Mrs. J. Crosby Brown, of New York. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) A sumptuous volume, containing a résumé of information drawn from a great variety of sources, and well classified under the heads of natious and races. The illustrations are very satisfactory, and are treated in a unique fashion by having the accompanying descriptions on the plates written out in a clear but picturesque hand. The book evidently was a labor of love, and the modest tone which pervades both preface and text comes as a surprise, when one looks for an almost pardonable display in so big a volume. — Laudes Domini, a Selection of Spiritual Songs, Ancient and Modern, for the Sunday School, edited by Charles Seymour Robinson. (The Century Co.) A book which may be commended on the ground that it is largely a selection from a general hymn-book of such hymns and tunes as come most within the range of children’s ideas and taste, and is thus educative. There are besides a few simple melodies and hymns which belong peculiarly to children.—The Japanese Wedding: a representation of the wedding ceremony in Japanese high life, arranged as a costume pantomime for public performance at church entertainments, school exhibitions, social gatherings, etc. By W. M. Lawlace. (Harold Roorbach, New York.) An interesting little pamphlet, which not only gives directions for acting, but contains a full narrative of the process of courtship. It takes fifty minutes to be married in Japan.

Books on Art. Portfolio Papers, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton (Roberts), is a selection by the editor from that periodical of a number of notices of artists and pictures, essays and conversations. Mr. Hamerton is a most agreeable writer, and this collection is not one of perfunctory magazine work, but of spontaneous writing, which found occasion rather than inspiration in the necessity of magazine conduct. There is a pleasant little preface, in which Mr. Hamerton gives an account of the origin of the Portfolio; and from time to time in his papers, as in the conversations on book illustrations, he speaks in a very colloquial fashion on topics which have an immediate interest to the large circle of readers who like concrete and close-at-hand illustrations of general principles in art. — Miss Sarah H. Adams has added to her previous favors in making Hermann Grimm’s books known to Americans by translating his The life of Raphael. (Cupples & Hurd.) An interesting feature of the work is the closing section, Four Centuries of Fame, in which the impression made by Raphael on painters and critics is recorded. Grimm, in this as in other books, regards his subject not as an object, but as a subject, and evidently proposes to himself to account for Raphael. Hence one gets a good deal of Raphael and Grimm.

Text-Books and Educational Helps. A TextBook of General Astronomy for Colleges and Scientific Schools, by Charles A. Young. (Ginn.) Intended for use in the general, and not the higher, mathematical or physical courses. Its use calls for only the most elementary knowledge of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, and it is greatly to be hoped that so convenient a text-book will do something toward stimulating the study of astronomy as an essential part of a liberal education. The interest of specialists ought not to mislead our higher universities into neglecting the more general treatment of the subject. — The Writer’s Handbook, a Guide to the Art of Composition; embracing a general treatise on composition and style ; instruction in English composition, with exercises for paraphrasing; and an elaborate letter-writer’s vade-mecum, in which are numerous rules and suggestions relating to the epistolary art. (Lippincott.) An English book, which seems to imply a degree of docility and dull seriousness on the part of English aspirants for literary fame which we fear is rather lacking in our lightminded people. — A selection from Lessing’s prose writings, under the title of Ausgewählte Prosa und Briefs, has been edited, with notes, by H. S. White, of Cornell. (Putnams.) It does not include the Laokoön, but may well be taken as leading up to it. It was a happy idea to include enough of his letters to give some notion of Lessing’s character. — The Kinder-Garten : Principles of Fröbel’s System, and their Bearing on the Education of Women ; also Remarks on the Higher Education of Women. By Emily Shirreff. (Bardeen.) A suggestive little book, in which the relation of the kindergarten to the higher education of women is clearly established and made very fruitful. The author recognizes well the nature of an education which trains the imagination and will, and does not confine itself to the understanding, the meanest faculty, as De Quincey says, of the human nature. — The First, Three Years of Childhood, by Bernard Perez; edited and translated by Alice M. Christie, with an introduction by James Sully. (Bardeen.) A physiological-psychological study, collecting about itself a great variety of incidents. It is difficult for one not wedded to this general philosophic scheme to resent an implication that children are simply the young of the human animal. — Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1886-87. (Government Printing Office.) Except for brief abstracts from reports of State Boards, the volume is almost wholly statistical. — The Bureau of Education has issued also The History of Education in North Carolina, by Charles Lee Smith, and Industrial Education in the South, by Rev. A. D. Mayo. This latter monograph is taken up mainly with a forcible appeal to the Southern people to make industrial training a constituent, part of education, and the writer rests his argument on broad grounds of philosophy, and not on mere expediency. — Sonnenschein’s Cyclopaedia of Education ; a Handbook of Reference on all Subjects connected with Education (its History, Theory, and Practice), comprising articles by eminent educational specialists : the whole arranged and edited by Alfred Ewen Fletcher. (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.) This is an English work imported for use in this country, and is serviceable for informing readers upon educational affairs in England; but it is very meagre as regards the United States, and not always accurate nor brought to date. It illustrates the insularity of the English mind that a " Cyclopædia ” like this should be so incomplete in its account of two countries, Prussia and the United States, which have made more distinct contributions to primary education than has England itself.

History. In the series Epochs of Modern History, the latest volume is The English Restoration and Louis XIV., from the Peace of Westphalia to the Peace of Nimwegen, by Osmund Airy. (Scribners.) The blending of European history in this double treatment strikes us as novel and suggestive. It is not often that an English or a French writer of an historical period gives adequate presentation of anything but his own national movement; whereas the philosophic student is on the lookout for those general movements which affect contemporary nationalities. — John Brown, by Dr. Hermann von Holst, edited by Frank Preston Stearns. (Cupples & Hurd.) The body of this book is an essay by Von Holst, translated by Mr. P. Marcon; but Mr. Stearns has also written a preface and compiled an appendix, which are, in part, replies to the criticisms of Nicolay and Hay and others.— The Story of Mexico, by Susan Hale. (Putnams.) A volume in The Story of the Nations series. There is a specially human interest attaching to this volume, for Miss Hale introduces the reader to the subject by a narrative of her personal approach to the country, and she closes by forecasting briefly the future of the country. It is impossible for the people of the United States to avoid feeling differently toward Mexico than toward any other of the contiguous states and nationalities. Mexico is the younger sister of the country. — English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, translated by Lucy T. Smith from the French of J. J. Jusserand. (Putnam’s Sons.) The reader interested in the manners and customs of England during the fourteenth century will find a great deal of curious and entertainingmatter in this volume.

Biography. Authors at Home, edited by J. L. and J. B. Gilder. (Cassell.) A collection of agreeably written sketches of American authors, which appeared originally in the Critic. The sketches are not encyclopædic nor biographic in the formal way, and they avoid the petty personal gossip. Good taste, as a rule, has presided over these interior views, and for that let us be thankful. — Life of Sir Robert Peel, by F. C. Montague. A volume in the International Statesmen series. (Lippincott.) Peel’s position in English polities during the great period of this century, so far as relates to England’s transition from an island to an empire, is so conspicuous that a well-written biography is an index to English history and, we may add, character, for Peel represents well the near-sightedness of many and favorite English statesmen. This book seems judicious and fair.—Life of Viscount Bolingbroke, by Arthur Hassall. (Lippineott.) Another volume in the same series. A rapid, somewhat, superficial view of a brilliant career. — Great Captains, a Course of Six Lectures, showing the Influence on the Art of War of the Campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, and Napoleon, by T. A. Dodge. (Ticknor.) An interesting, rapid summary by a writer who knows how to give the essentials of his subject. The main purpose of the book is to illustrate the development of the art of war, but Colonel Dodge has a strong interest in the human side of his subject, and the reader will light often upon keen historical criticism and suggestion. — General Gordon, by Sir William F. Butler, is the initial volume of the new series English Men of Action. (Macmillan.) The writer is in full sympathy with his subject, hut inasmuch as Gordon was a man of consuming zeal, we think his biographer should have studied greater reserve. The eloquence of the book is rather pronounced. — Lives of the Fathers, Sketches of Church History in Biography, by Frederic W. Farrar. (Macmillan.) In two compact volumes Archdeacon Farrar has written a history of the theology, organization, philosophy, and action of the first four Christian centuries under the pleasing and convenient form of a series of eighteen biographic sketches. His first subject is Ignatius, and the last Chrysostom. As his plan requires him to pass in review Athanasius, Tertullian, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, Augustine, it is clear that he has the opportunity of giving a tolerably full conspectus of the great movements in early Christianity. Perhaps it would have swelled the work too much, but it seems a pity that he did not furnish also a brief survey, in connected form, of that epoch of Christianity.—The Life of Thomas Ken, by E. H. Plumptre, Dean of Wells (E. & J. B. Young & Co.), J, is a charming biography of the notable Bishop of Bath and Wells in the seventeenth century, the friend and kinsman of Izaak Walton, whose epitaph he wrote, and the author of several fine hymns.

Books of Travel. Gibraltar, by Henry M. Field. (Scribners.) Dr. Field mingles personal experience with historic sketches and descriptions of life in an agreeable manner, and some of the illustrations, notably that of Catalan Bay, give a capital notion of this most impressive spot. — Winter Sketches from the Saddle, by a septuagenarian, John Codman. (Putnams.) A racy hook, which is really more autobiographical and anecdotical than descriptive, but is an admirable view of life from the vantage of a seat in the saddle. One can see that Captain Codman has kept his spirits up by his companionship with a good nag, and the breeze which blows through his little book is a healthy tonic. — Jonathan and his Continent, by Max O’Rell and Jack Allyn. (Cassell.) A mixture of shrewdness and superficiality. The epigrammatic disease is often fatal to sound judgment and correct observation. — Truth about Russia, by W. T. Stead. (Cassell.) There is something charmingly insolent in the manner of this book. The writer, a journalist by profession, makes up his mind that England, including the Pall Mall Gazette, ought to know the truth about Russia, and that he is the man to find out all about it. So he begins by calling on Mr. Balfour, Mr. Gladstone, and other leaders, to get at their views, and en passant to notice how Mr. Balfour’s hair is turning a little gray, and how Mr. Gladstone spells freedom ; and then, armed with proper letters, he trots off to call on the Czar, Tolstoï, Ignatieff, Boulanger, Bismarck, and other game for the interviewer, Stanley’s plunge into Africa is the reporter as a discoverer. Stead’s plunge into Russia is the reporter as a statesman and peacemaker. The book is a lively one, and its author hits off a good many things cleverly, but he illustrates nothing more perfectly than his own profession, with its cheerful confidence.

Biblical Criticism. Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, arranged and edited as an Introduction to the Study of the Bible, by Edward T. Bartlett and John P. Peters. (Putnams.) This is the second volume of an interesting and useful work to which we have referred before, and is occupied with Hebrew Literature as that was with Hebrew Story from the Creation to the Exile. In other words, treating the Bible as literature, the editors so arrange chapters and psalms as to give in continuous order a history of the Jews from the Exile to Nehemiah, a sketch of Hebrew legislation, a collection of Hebrew tales, illustrations of Hebrew prophecy, examples of Hebrew poetry and of Hebrew wisdom. The literary form of the volume makes the whole book a very suggestive commentary on, or rather key to, the English Bible. The King James version appears to be used, with slight modifications in the direction of rendering the poetry more rhythmical. — The Bible View of the Jewish Church, by Howard Crosby. (Funk & Wagnalls.) Dr. Crosby delivered thirteen lectures before his congregation, with the design to set forth the ecclesiastical polity of the Jews from Abraham to the coming of the Messiah, with special reference to the destructive criticism of Welhausen and his school, and with a purpose to demonstrate the failure of Judaism, except as it was restored again and again by the hand of God. To the ordinary reader, the Jewish church as outlined in the Bible is a marvelous expression of human faith in one God, and Simeon and Anna are representatives, not isolated exceptions.

Biological Science. The Animal Life of our Sea-Shore, with special reference to the New Jersey coast and the southern shore of Long Island, by Angelo Heilprin. (Lippincott.) A convenient hand-book, clearly written and abundantly illustrated. It ought to be of real service to young students, who will be especially gratified at not being singled out by the writer. There is no My dear young friend in the book. — Insects Injurious to Fruits, by William Saunders. (Lippincott.) A systematic work, of practical worth to fruit-growers as well as interesting to entomologists who care for the economics of their science. The writer does not confine himself to detecting the criminals; he points out the means of stopping their crimes.

Books for the Young. Three Greek Children, a Story of Home in Old Time, by the Rev. Alfred J. Church, M. A. With Illustrations after Flaxman and the Antique. Charming sketches, at once spirited and accurate, of Greek child-life, the interest in which will not be confined to the young readers to whom the book is primarily addressed.